subject: Academic Disciplines: What You Need To Be A Good Historian [print this page] History is one of the most ancient and very important sciences. It researches human past, so it helps to understand who people are and, maybe, why they are here. If you like this discipline and if you want to devote your life to historical study, you should not only study history thoroughly, but to develop some additional skills. What are they? What should a good historian know? What should he/she be able to do?
1.Good memory. Any good historian needs good memory. This discipline presupposes knowledge of a huge scope of facts, dates, names, events, etc. Fortunately, there is a lot of literature on memory development. So, even if you have some difficulties with that, you can easily train your memory.
2.Patience. One more important trait is patience. If you cannot sit still for more than two minutes you are likely to fail in historic studies. Even Indiana Jones, being a good historian, did not only got into scrapes and saved ladies. He spent hours in the libraries (of course, this part of his life was not included in the movie). Thus, you must be ready to read a lot of different literature. In fact, you should love reading. Libraries will become your second home.
3.Good command of your word. Being a historian presupposes revealing your concepts and different ideas about human history. Thus, you will have to write loads of articles, essays, report and other academic writings. In fact, it is very important since if you fail to write a good work, no one will know about your discoveries, instead someone else can tell the world about it. Of course, you should start training your writing skills right now!
Now you know what features of character and different skills you must have to be a good historian whose name will be someday placed in the same line with Herodotus and Tacitus.
